Generating ephemeral key pools for sending and receiving secure communications

Abstract

A method, system, and non-transitory computer readable medium are described for providing a sender a plurality of ephemeral keys such that a sender and receiver can exchange encrypted communications. Accordingly, a sender may retrieve information, such as a public key and a key identifier, for the first receiver from a local storage. The retrieved information may be used to generate a key-encrypting key that is used to generate a random communication encryption key. The random communication encryption key is used to encrypt a communication, while the key-encrypting key encrypts the random communication key. The encrypted communication and the encrypted random communication key are transmitted to the first receiver.

Description

STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT[0001]This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. 2014-14031000011 awarded by the Central Intelligence Agency. The Government has certain rights in the invention.CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0002]This application is related to U.S. application Ser. No. 15 / 647,569, entitled, “Sending Secure Communications Using a Local Ephemeral Key Pool,” filed concurrently herewith, and U.S. application Ser. No. 15 / 647,577, entitled, “Provisioning Ephemeral Key Pools for Sending and Receiving Secure Communications,” also filed concurrently herewith, the entireties of which are herein incorporated by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Key distribution centers allow users to upload keys to a repository so that others may access those keys to send the users encrypted messages. For example, a first user generates an asymmetric key pair and uploads the public key to a key distribution center. A secon...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present patent describes a method, system, and computer-readable medium for providing encrypted communications even when a key distribution center and communication server are unavailable. The method involves retrieving information about a user from local storage, generating an encryption key, encrypting a communication to the user, and transmitting the communication to the user. The system includes an interface for transmitting public keys and their associated unique identifiers to a server and another device. The technical effect of the patent is to provide a reliable way to communicate even in situations where there is no key distribution center or communication server available.

Problems solved by technology

However, key distribution centers suffer from a technological problem in that the key distribution center represent a single source of failure.

In another example, the key distribution center may be compromised, which could allow a malicious user to conduct a man-in-the-middle attack and eavesdrop on the communications between the first and second users.

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